Google for Non-Profits Newsletter - October, 2008

[Galen Panger]

Google for Non-Profits Newsletter - October, 2008

We've got a lot of great stuff for you in this month's newsletter. A special thank you to everyone who filled out our non-profit survey last month; there were lots of great ideas and suggestions, and we look forward to implementing some of the best over the coming months.

If you haven't seen it already, check out our newly-streamlined Google for Non-Profits site. Based on your feedback, we're going to focus on internationalizing the site and highlighting more video content; stay tuned, and keep letting us know what you think.

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Google tools for election season
Moderator
Events and trainings update
YouTube "In My Name"
Feedburner
All about ad quality scores and Google search rankings
Map Maker and Google News now available in Africa
Online safety videos with AARP
Android

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Google tools for election season

With fourteen days left to go, many eyes are trained on the U.S. elections. Naturally, Google wants to help make learning about and voting in the election easier for everyone (if applicable); our 2008 election site has all the tools you need to get informed and find out where to vote. Get the latest election news, popular blog posts , quotes from the candidates, and videos straight from the campaigns. If you're an educator, we've got a site for you. And with the increased interest in voter registration and polling places right around now, we've got all the information you need in one place, too (the launch of our polling place info is near).

We also had a fair number of tools available for the Canadian election last week and we continue our efforts to celebrate elections in countries around the world with tools to help citizens get informed.

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Moderator

In this election season, why not bring a little democracy into your meetings and presentations? Google Moderator enables non-profits to run Q&A sessions efficiently by allowing audiences to submit questions to a common forum and then vote on which ones they think should be answered. In this way, the most representative questions bubble up to the top, helping you make the most of your Q&A time.

As an event leader, you can create a topic and share the link with your audience hours or days in advance of the session. Before the meeting, you can review the questions to tailor your presentation, and during the meeting your audience can continue to submit and vote on questions for the Q&A. There are a lot of possibilities for this tool, but the best part is knowing you haven't left out your audience's most burning questions.

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Events and trainings update

Last month, Google.org invited the non-profits attending Clinton Global Initiative to a half-day technology training on tools to improve their operations and enhance their websites. Romanus Berg from Ashoka moderated the session and Suzanne DiBianca and others from Salesforce talked about how non-profits can take advantage of the powerful integration between Salesforce and Google Apps. After a high-level plenary session, the 75 organizations in attendance participated in breakout sessions focused on technology solutions for improving internal efficiency, optimizing websites and harnessing the power of online video. For video from the event, check out our YouTube channel.

Other training events and materials continue to appear on the Google Blog circuit. Our Analytics blog discusses how to use Analytics metrics to optimize your AdWords/Grants account, and offers training seminars in several cities. Similarly, our Webmaster blog invites you to join us on Wednesday for a live online chat with Google experts and offers videos on how to use Webmaster Tools to optimize your site.

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YouTube "In My Name"

"In My Name," a global effort to raise awareness of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), launched this month with an original song and call-out video from Black Eyed Peas frontman Will.I.Am, who asked citizens to take action to end poverty.

The international program, which highlights the work of 12 different nonprofits including Oxfam, Save the Children and GCAP, has already received hundreds of pledges from close to twenty different countries. The channel also currently features 25 celebrity pledges from people like Elle McPherson, John Legend, Bono, Queen Rania, and Kristin Davis. Visit the In My Name channel to add your name to the fight against poverty.

In other YouTube news, YouTube Insight now allows you to see which parts of your videos are popular with your audiences; and Contribute Magazine has a great article on creating "cause videos."

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Feedburner

If your non-profit publishes a blog, you most likely have an RSS feed. And if you have an RSS feed, you should get Feedburner. Feedburner allows you to add all kinds of features to your RSS feed, which is an aggregation all of your blog posts that your users can subscribe to. With Feedburner, you can allow people to subscribe to your feed via e-mail (rather than via specialized RSS readers), and you can track all of your subscribers with rich analytics features.

Click here for more about how Feedburner can help enhance your organization's blog.

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All about ad quality scores and Google search rankings

A ton of technology goes into making Google the advanced set of tools and offerings our company is today, and a lot of times that technology can seem pretty mystifying. As part of our effort to help non-profits understand how Google works, we think there are a couple of blog posts you should read.

The first, about ad "quality scores," discusses how the quality of your ad and the amount you're willing to pay per click interact to determine how your ad is ranked on the right-hand side of Google search results. The second is part of a series that looks at the technologies behind how we display and rank our search results, from philosophy to execution. Google experiments a lot with our search technologies -- and the results may surprise you.

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Map Maker and Google News now available in Africa

Last month, we discussed a tool called Google Map Maker that allows you to create and share maps in areas that don't have a lot of pre-existing mapping data, and we were impressed by your enthusiastic response. Today, we're happy to inform you that Map Maker is now available in 122 countries, including 45 African countries and 17 additional countries in Asia. Check out the full list of countries, or learn more about Map Maker on our Google Lat Long blog.

In August, we also launched our first editions of Google News in Africa, bringing Google News to all of the world's inhabited continents.

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Online safety videos with AARP

Now more than ever before, older Americans are logging on and surfing the web to stay in touch with family and friends, read websites and blogs, share photos, watch videos, and run online businesses. Like all Internet users, they're vulnerable to viruses and malware, and they're looking for resources to learn how to keep their information on the web safe, private, and under their control.

With this in mind, Google and AARP teamed up to launch a video series aimed at keeping seniors -- and everyone -- safe and secure online. Learn about password safety, sharing content, shopping securely online and more.

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Android

We've heard a lot of excitement in the non-profit community about Google's new open mobile operating system, Android, and we didn't want to miss the opportunity to talk about it with you. The first phone running Android will be released with T-Mobile this Wednesday, and we're really excited about the early reviews.

The best part about Android is its openness to developers and carriers. Developers can create applications to run on the platform without interference, and carriers can customize the software to suit a wide variety of cell phones. We also think Google users will like the integration with our services, like Gmail.

For an in-depth look at how to use Android-based phones, check out our video playlist on YouTube.

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That's it for this month's newsletter; if you're a U.S. citizen, don't forget to vote on November 4th. As always, please send any suggestions for the newsletter or Google for Non-Profits site our way.

Thanks for reading.

Galen from the Google for Non-Profits Team